Cast your mind way back to when Intel was more or less content to be a server CPU maker and let the system makers adopting its Pentium, Xeon, and Itanium processors decide the defining characteristics of the computers that used those x86 and IA-64 processors. Not so any more. Intel may not call itself a server-maker, but for all …

Que?

So, Intel are making mobos and talking "the platform", and that will somehow stop vendors making their own mobos? Bit of a leap, innit? Intel have made server mobos for yonkeys and it didn't stop the top vendors either making their own or having their own made for them. And seeing as the x64 space is currently the fastest growing segment of the server market, I'd say it's pretty certain that the tier-one vendors (hp, Dell and IBM) will be at least making some specialised mobos of their own to differentiate their products to sell alongside the vanilla Intel offerings.

No, this looks like more of an Intel push to lock AMD out of the low-end by giving the whitebox vendors a more varied range of one-stop-shop offerings.